beriukay

Karma: 1,037

beriukay Apr 13, 2020, 7:42 PM
4 points
on: In Defense of Politics
Just about a year ago, Assange was arrested, and is no longer at the embassy. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47891737

beriukay Nov 22, 2018, 6:04 AM
11 points
on: Jesus Made Me Rational (An Introduction)
In case you care about editing/publishing, a couple spelling corrections:
“If the universe was, **at** this person claimed, made by rationality”, probably should be “as”.
“Thomas Acquinas” should be “Aquinas”.
Now for an actual comment: how unshakeable are we talking here? Are you saying that you don’t believe there is any amount of evidence that can sway you? Or just that you are extremely confident in the truth claims of your religious belief, and wish to test that confidence with a vigorous battery of discussion?

beriukay Nov 17, 2018, 7:49 PM
47 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Act of Charity
Just a few possibilities (These are U.S. examples, because that’s what I know):
- Throwing away mail from a previous tenant—Fines up to $250,000 and 5 years in prison. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1702)
- Jaywalking—Municipal rules vary, but not hard to enforce if a cop sees you doing it.
- Did you ever possess a marker while under the age of 18? Hopefully you were not in Oklahoma (https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-using-permanent-marker-under-18-years-is-illegal-in-the-USA)
- Driving too fast or slow—Rules seem to vary, as does enforcement, but both of these can get you pulled over.
- Illegal sex practices—Unless you are married and doing it missionary-style with intent to make babies, it is possible you are violating a sodomy law, or perhaps an obscenity statute. These are obviously difficult to enforce if you care about privacy.
- Until fairly recently, all public performances of the Happy Birthday song violated copyright.
- File sharing has gotten many people in trouble, over the years.
- Taking a Rx medication that was not specifically provided for you.
- Gambling of any kind has been banned, though there have been exceptions over the years.
- Public urination.
- Logging into a wifi network without explicit permission—Federal (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030) and State laws (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/michigan-man-arrested-for-using-cafes-free-wifi-from-his-car/) apply to this one.
- That Federal law, by the way, is vague enough to get you in trouble for making a facebook page placeholder for you boss (though there’s more to it than just that, this is the law he ended up pleading guilty for violating. https://newsone.com/926425/prison-guard-charged-with-pretending-to-be-his-own-boss-on-facebook/)
Even if you have never personally violated any of those, “not doing anything wrong” is no defense against a motivated law enforcement official. The sheer volume of statutes, laws, and precedents basically puts all citizens in the position that they are probably violating SOME law all the time. There’s a not-very-good book with the title Three Felonies A Day that tried to argue the title as the thesis, but really ended up as a case study for examples like that Shkreli guy. The only real defense seems to be don’t stick out.

beriukay Oct 19, 2018, 4:47 PM
16 points
on: The Art of the Overbet
Fact check: it appears it was Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, who gambled $5000, won $27,000, and paid the fuel bill. Wiki pointed to this Huffpo article: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/fred-smith-blackjack-fedex_n_1966837.html

beriukay Jul 3, 2013, 10:44 AM
0 points
on: Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013
One of my best friends is a very high suicide risk. Has anybody dealt with this kind of situation; specifically trying to convince the friend to try psychiatry? I’ll be happy to talk details, but I’m not sure the Open Thread is the best medium.

beriukay May 26, 2013, 1:02 PM
4 points
in reply to: BerryPick6’s comment on: 10-Step Anti-Procrastination Checklist
Verdict?

beriukay May 26, 2013, 1:00 PM
0 points
in reply to: wadavis’s comment on: 10-Step Anti-Procrastination Checklist
With coding, at least, I find that I can stay focused if I put console outputs in the program. Debug info, or progress updates.

For example, I had some encoded text to decipher in my crypto class, and I knew the method of encoding used, so all I had to do was check every character’s input with the ciphertext to see the answer… so I made it print every character, and then delete the character if it was wrong (or move on to the next if right), so it looked a bit like Hollywood-style decoding. Definitely kept me interested.

beriukay May 26, 2013, 10:47 AM
1 point
on: Be a little bit more trusting than most people think sensible
I had a similar experience in an LA pub while waiting for my flight out. I asked a couple that was sitting nearby to watch my stuff, and they were kind enough to do so. Less risky than what you did, but still a calculated risk.

beriukay May 19, 2013, 10:25 AM
3 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
I’m curious as to how you went about identifying such a nootropic.

beriukay Apr 3, 2013, 10:24 AM
2 points
in reply to: beriukay’s comment on: Open thread, February 15-28, 2013
I got in touch with Mr. Rhinehart about my list. Here’s his analysis of what I currently have:

Hey Paul,

Looks quite thorough. Note at small scale it is usually more efficient to find a multivitamin that contains many of the >micronutrients than mixing them separately. Also you will exhaust your carb source rather quickly so it may pay to buy >maltodextrin at a slightly higher scale. Otherwise looks pretty good.

I should be getting some money from the Good Judgment project soon. I’ll buy the ingredients then.

beriukay Apr 3, 2013, 10:15 AM
0 points
in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: Rationalist Lent
I signed up, too, but he’s been a bit slow in following through.

beriukay Mar 30, 2013, 11:17 AM
0 points
in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: Open thread, February 15-28, 2013
Oops, sorry!

beriukay Feb 24, 2013, 7:08 PM
12 points
on: Open thread, February 15-28, 2013
Any bored nutritionists out there? I’ve put together a list of nutrients, with their USDA recommended quantities/amounts, and scoured amazon for the best deals, in trying to create my own version of Soylent. My search was complicated by the following goals:
- I want my Soylent to have all USDA recommendations for a person of my age/sex/mass.
- I want my Soylent to be easy to make (which means a preference for liquid and powder versions of nutrients).
- My Soylent should be as cheap, per day, as possible (I’d rather have 10 lbs of Vitamin C at $0.00/day than 1lb at $0.01/day).
- Because I’d like it to be trivially easy to possess a year’s supply of Soylent, should I find this to be a good experiment.
- I want to make it easy for other people to follow my steps, and criticize my mistakes, because I’m totally NOT a nutritionist, but I’m awfully tired of being told that I need X amount of Y in my diet, without citations or actionable suggestions (and it is way easier to count calories with whey protein than at a restaurant).
- I want the items to be available to anybody in the USA, because I live at the end of a pretty long supply chain, and can’t find all this stuff locally.
- I’m trying not to order things from merchants who practice woo-woo, but if they have the best version of what I need, I won’t be too picky.
There’s probably other things, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

The spreadsheet isn’t done yet. I hope to make it possible to try dynamic combinations of multiple nutrients, since most merchants seem to prefer the multivitamin approach. Plus, I’d like for there to be more options for liquid and powder substances, because they are easier to combine. Right now, I’m just an explorer, but eventually I’d like to just have a recipe.

If this all sounds too risky, I’ve also made contact with Rob, and he says that he’s planning on releasing his data in a few weeks, once he’s comfortable with his results (I think he’s waiting on friends to confirm his findings). I’m planning on showing him my list, so we can compare notes. It has already been noted that his current Soylent formula is a bit lacking in fiber. My Soylent is currently slated to use psyllium husks to make up the difference, but I’m looking into other options.

A brief overview of the options indicates that this isn’t much cheaper than other food choices (~$7.20 / day), but it meets all of your needs, and once the routine is down, would be fast and easy to make, and could be stored for a long time. So I’m optimistic.

beriukay Feb 24, 2013, 6:10 PM
3 points
in reply to: tadrinth’s comment on: Rationalist Lent
You’re absolutely right. I’ve had a spot of trouble finding a source of fiber that won’t expand and turn my version of soylent into a gelatin.

beriukay Feb 24, 2013, 9:08 AM
5 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: LessWrong help desk—free paper downloads and more
The Big One: A Review of Richard Posner’s “Catastrophe: Risk and Response”

beriukay Feb 20, 2013, 4:25 PM
9 points
in reply to: Gastogh’s comment on: Rationalist Lent
Man, my very own Discussion-level post! I’ll start working on that. As for my list, I’m about 90% done with the first sweep, and then I’ll go back through it and try to find better alternatives. One thing I’ve noticed so far is how outrageously high the dosages of some vitamins that makers generally sell! I knew it was above the FDA recommendations, but I didn’t know that it was sometimes more than 3 orders of magnitude!

beriukay Feb 17, 2013, 12:29 PM
5 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationalist Lent
Right now, I’m shopping around. I’ll let you know when I’ve assembled (or at least decided upon) the ingredients.

beriukay Feb 16, 2013, 10:37 AM
4 points
in reply to: Adele_L’s comment on: Rationalist Lent
I’ll keep you posted!

beriukay 15 Feb 2013 10:26 UTC
24 points
on: Rationalist Lent
I’m thinking about stopping eating food, like this guy.

beriukay 10 Feb 2013 14:03 UTC
7 points
in reply to: chemotaxis101’s comment on: LessWrong help desk—free paper downloads and more
I could only get 2 and 4.